A couple has been jailed for keeping a young woman as a sex slave, forcing her into prostitution and torturing her with bleach, nails and burning hot items.

Aldair Hodza, 36, and Laura Sorensen, 31, were sentenced to more than 40 years behind bars after luring their 20-year-old victim into their motorhome and abusing her for 18 days.

Jailed: Laura Sorenson (Image: HENRICO JAIL EAST)

The young woman only managed to escape when a truck driver spotted her haunted face through the vehicle's back window at a truck stop in Virginia and raised the alarm, the New York Daily News reported.

During her time in captivity, the victim had nails driven into her feet, bleach poured into her wounds and heated keys and scissors burned into her skin.

She was treated like an animal and dragged by a lead down a gravel path,court documents show.

To deter her from trying to escape, Hodza slit the throat of a dog in and warned her that if she failed to obey them, her own organs would be slowly cut out, one by one, the Daily News reported.

She was also forced to have sex with men who had responded to online ads.

Depraved: Aldair Hodza (Image: HENRICO JAIL EAST)

offered apologies to their 20-year-old victim Friday but to little, if any, sympathy from a judge who described her physical and psychological wounds as likely permanent.

"She may never be able to have a normal relationship because of the unusual and rare level of depravity in this case," U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson said.

Hodza was sentenced to nearly 42 years in prison while Sorensen was sentenced to 40 years.

Both apologised to their victim as they were sent down.

But US District Judge Henry Hudson said: "She may never be able to have a normal relationship because of the unusual and rare level of depravity in this case.

"Some of the things you did to this young lady are so horrifying you cannot capture it in words."